The problem was that writing a huge essay on why you’re breaking up with someone, including detailed analysis of why there is insufficient attraction is a horrible thing to do to someone without even giving any benefit to yourself.
I don’t know that that’s necessarily the case. My first serious girlfriend wrote me a very long e-mail before our break-up, laying out her rational analysis of why she believed our relationship was untenable in the long term; she actually succeeded in persuading me to see it her way, which I’d been resisting for emotional reasons. That allowed us to have an amicable parting of ways, and we remain good friends to this day.
I’ll think about that—from the upvotes, it appears you’re not the only Less Wronger interested (at least, I assume an upvote to a one-liner request like that means “I’d like to see it, too”). I wouldn’t post an unedited copy, as there are some details in it that I consider very private, as, I think, would my former girlfriend. But I’ll take a look at it later and see what would need to be redacted. I would also have to ask her permission before posting any of it, of course, and I’m reluctant to bother her just now—she has a newborn daughter (as in, born last week), so I expect she’s rather preoccupied at the moment.
Heh. Even taking that into account, I still think your odds are better with a randomly chosen LWer as a recipient than a randomly chosen partner-of-a-female. But that’s admittedly a pretty low bar.
I would prefer to hear all the reasons, myself and am ten times more likely to choke on fluff like “It’s not you, it’s me.” than burst into flames because somebody criticized me. I need closure and feedback and for my life events to make sense. For those purposes, the only information I’d deem good enough is a serving of reality.
Shminux’s point, and the rest of this thread, is about predicting the behavior of typical women in order to make an accurate assessment about what breakup approach is best. Do you think that your preferences are typical for women, or even typical for women-who-LW-folks-date, many of whom are not themselves LWers?
According to Vladimir, LessWrong has somewhere in the ballpark of 600-1000 active users. According to Yvain’s 2011 survey, 92 of the 1090 respondents were female. If I alone would respond well, that increases the chances of a good response by an LW woman by over 1% (unless you want to include inactive members). Since Dave’s point is not “You’re more likely to get a good response from an LW woman than not.” and was “You’re more likely to get a good response from an LW woman than a random woman.” me saying that actually gives a potentially significant support to his point. If you calculate the chances of a random woman responding well to be under 1% (seems reasonable) and don’t consider inactive users to be an “LWer”, then I totally supported his point. If not, then all Dave needs to do to figure out whether he’s right is to count the number of LW women he is sure would respond well and compare the ratio with his estimate of how many random women would respond well. I doubt anyone here thinks the percentage of random women that would respond well is beyond the single digit percents. If that’s right, my saying so gave 10% or more of the support needed to think that he’s right. As for the behavior of the average LW woman, I have no idea. That I would respond well confirms that at least some LW women would respond well, which might help people figure out if it’s worthwhile to find out exactly how many of us there are.
Which doesn’t contradict Dave’s idea that LW women / the women that LW members date might be more likely to respond well.
Are you sure you know how you would react...
Totally sure. My last boyfriend attempted to give me fluff and I tore through it. I always want to get down to the bottom of why a relationship did not work. Even if reality is devastating, I want reality. You can tell I’m strong enough to deal with criticism because I invite it often. You can tell I’m strong enough to swallow criticism because of my elitism thread—check out the note at the top. I feel kind of dumb for not seeing these problems in advance (hindsight bias, I guess?). Now that I do see how awful my thread was—in public of all places—have I vanished, or gone crybaby or begged anybody for emotional support?
Dave’s idea that LW women / the women that LW members date
Just for clarity, I did not suggest the latter. What I suggested was that this sort of thing, initiated by the partner of an LW member, is more likely to work out well… put differently, that LW members are more likely to respond well (or at least less likely to respond poorly)… than for non-LWers.
The gender of the LW member, and the gender of the partner, is not strictly irrelevant but is largely screened off by their membership.
I make no such claims about the partners of LWers.
Since your initial (and highly promising) arrival, I must admit that I lost respect for you faster than I have for any other poster in the history of LessWrong.
Downvoted because I don’t like cheapshots. Criticisms about the community’s behavior in that thread should be confined to that thread, and should be substantive. The way you’re doing it now forces other commenters to choose between addressing your cheapshot and derailing the comment thread or allowing the cheapshot to go unchallenged.
I wouldn’t have downvoted if you’d used less strong language in your criticism or if you had supported your argument better. It’s okay for you to reference other threads as proof of things, in my book. But I don’t like that you asserted the behavior in that discussion was “completely irrational” without providing any sort of support for your argument; you just threw out an unfair label in a context where it was difficult to challenge it.
It seemed a reasonable to me; after all, shminux’s comment wasn’t random unrelated criticism, it was a germane followup to a previous comment. Posting it in the other thread eliminates the entire purpose of the comment.
I dispute the accuracy of shminux’s comment, and yet also feel reluctant to challenge the comment because it would be a digression from the topic of the above comments. That’s a problem.
I recognize the need to draw from other sections of the site in order to talk about LessWrong as a community; I’m fine with that. But if we’re going to do that then I think we need to at least use good arguments while discussing those other threads. Otherwise it becomes too easy to just criticize things in contexts where they’re difficult to challenge.
Don’t you? Fine, I’ll bite. While the bell curve is pretty wide for both genders, an average (western?) male tends to be more analytical and reserved and less emotional than an average (western?) female. At least in my (admittedly limited) personal experience observing my family, friends and acquaintances. Certainly the cultural stereotypes bear it out, as well. Thus he would be (again, on average) more inclined to listen to reasoned arguments, as opposed to “It’s not working out between us” with some made-up excuses designed to make him feel better. Whereas she (on average) would be likely to take every logical argument as in Luke’s story, as a personal affront, insult and rejection. There are plenty of exceptions, but if you take 1000 break-ups, I’d wager that in the majority of the cases a bit of reason on the woman’s side would make it less painful for the guy, while a bit of logic on the man’s side would probably make it more painful for the girl than “it’s not you it’s me”.
I have no idea how same-sex or other less-standard breakups work out in terms of rationality.
At least in my (admittedly limited) personal experience observing my family, friends and acquaintances. Certainly the cultural stereotypes bear it out, as well.
Your perception of the people you know plus cultural stereotypes is really pretty weak evidence. I could make the following argument: In my immediate family, the men are more emotional and less analytical/reserved than the women—they tend to get angry/aggressive in response to difficult things, whereas the women seem to stay calm. Plus, cultural stereotypes bear out the idea that men are more aggressive/angry than women. Therefore, men would be more likely to take this kind of letter badly.
I’m not making that argument, but I can’t see that it would be much weaker than yours.
I don’t know that that’s necessarily the case. My first serious girlfriend wrote me a very long e-mail before our break-up, laying out her rational analysis of why she believed our relationship was untenable in the long term; she actually succeeded in persuading me to see it her way, which I’d been resisting for emotional reasons. That allowed us to have an amicable parting of ways, and we remain good friends to this day.
That’s amazing. Can we see a copy of the email?
I’ll think about that—from the upvotes, it appears you’re not the only Less Wronger interested (at least, I assume an upvote to a one-liner request like that means “I’d like to see it, too”). I wouldn’t post an unedited copy, as there are some details in it that I consider very private, as, I think, would my former girlfriend. But I’ll take a look at it later and see what would need to be redacted. I would also have to ask her permission before posting any of it, of course, and I’m reluctant to bother her just now—she has a newborn daughter (as in, born last week), so I expect she’s rather preoccupied at the moment.
I’m guessing that this is more likely to work out when it’s the female who decides to be rational about it.
I’m guessing it’s more likely to work out when it’s the partner of a LessWronger who initiates it, than when it’s the partner of a nonLessWronger.
I would have agreed with you if not for the recent completely irrational feminism and creepiness discussion.
Heh. Even taking that into account, I still think your odds are better with a randomly chosen LWer as a recipient than a randomly chosen partner-of-a-female. But that’s admittedly a pretty low bar.
I would prefer to hear all the reasons, myself and am ten times more likely to choke on fluff like “It’s not you, it’s me.” than burst into flames because somebody criticized me. I need closure and feedback and for my life events to make sense. For those purposes, the only information I’d deem good enough is a serving of reality.
Shminux’s point, and the rest of this thread, is about predicting the behavior of typical women in order to make an accurate assessment about what breakup approach is best. Do you think that your preferences are typical for women, or even typical for women-who-LW-folks-date, many of whom are not themselves LWers?
According to Vladimir, LessWrong has somewhere in the ballpark of 600-1000 active users. According to Yvain’s 2011 survey, 92 of the 1090 respondents were female. If I alone would respond well, that increases the chances of a good response by an LW woman by over 1% (unless you want to include inactive members). Since Dave’s point is not “You’re more likely to get a good response from an LW woman than not.” and was “You’re more likely to get a good response from an LW woman than a random woman.” me saying that actually gives a potentially significant support to his point. If you calculate the chances of a random woman responding well to be under 1% (seems reasonable) and don’t consider inactive users to be an “LWer”, then I totally supported his point. If not, then all Dave needs to do to figure out whether he’s right is to count the number of LW women he is sure would respond well and compare the ratio with his estimate of how many random women would respond well. I doubt anyone here thinks the percentage of random women that would respond well is beyond the single digit percents. If that’s right, my saying so gave 10% or more of the support needed to think that he’s right. As for the behavior of the average LW woman, I have no idea. That I would respond well confirms that at least some LW women would respond well, which might help people figure out if it’s worthwhile to find out exactly how many of us there are.
Two comments:
First, you clearly are not an average female.
Are you sure you know how you would react in both cases? People are notoriously bad at predicting their own behavior.
Which doesn’t contradict Dave’s idea that LW women / the women that LW members date might be more likely to respond well.
Totally sure. My last boyfriend attempted to give me fluff and I tore through it. I always want to get down to the bottom of why a relationship did not work. Even if reality is devastating, I want reality. You can tell I’m strong enough to deal with criticism because I invite it often. You can tell I’m strong enough to swallow criticism because of my elitism thread—check out the note at the top. I feel kind of dumb for not seeing these problems in advance (hindsight bias, I guess?). Now that I do see how awful my thread was—in public of all places—have I vanished, or gone crybaby or begged anybody for emotional support?
No.
I am stronger than that.
Just for clarity, I did not suggest the latter. What I suggested was that this sort of thing, initiated by the partner of an LW member, is more likely to work out well… put differently, that LW members are more likely to respond well (or at least less likely to respond poorly)… than for non-LWers.
The gender of the LW member, and the gender of the partner, is not strictly irrelevant but is largely screened off by their membership.
I make no such claims about the partners of LWers.
Since your initial (and highly promising) arrival, I must admit that I lost respect for you faster than I have for any other poster in the history of LessWrong.
But posts like this one give me hope.
Downvoted because I don’t like cheapshots. Criticisms about the community’s behavior in that thread should be confined to that thread, and should be substantive. The way you’re doing it now forces other commenters to choose between addressing your cheapshot and derailing the comment thread or allowing the cheapshot to go unchallenged.
I wouldn’t have downvoted if you’d used less strong language in your criticism or if you had supported your argument better. It’s okay for you to reference other threads as proof of things, in my book. But I don’t like that you asserted the behavior in that discussion was “completely irrational” without providing any sort of support for your argument; you just threw out an unfair label in a context where it was difficult to challenge it.
It seemed a reasonable to me; after all, shminux’s comment wasn’t random unrelated criticism, it was a germane followup to a previous comment. Posting it in the other thread eliminates the entire purpose of the comment.
I dispute the accuracy of shminux’s comment, and yet also feel reluctant to challenge the comment because it would be a digression from the topic of the above comments. That’s a problem.
I recognize the need to draw from other sections of the site in order to talk about LessWrong as a community; I’m fine with that. But if we’re going to do that then I think we need to at least use good arguments while discussing those other threads. Otherwise it becomes too easy to just criticize things in contexts where they’re difficult to challenge.
I’d like to hear other possible solutions though.
Why do you think so?
Why do you think a man would think so?
I don’t know! That was why I asked.
Don’t you? Fine, I’ll bite. While the bell curve is pretty wide for both genders, an average (western?) male tends to be more analytical and reserved and less emotional than an average (western?) female. At least in my (admittedly limited) personal experience observing my family, friends and acquaintances. Certainly the cultural stereotypes bear it out, as well. Thus he would be (again, on average) more inclined to listen to reasoned arguments, as opposed to “It’s not working out between us” with some made-up excuses designed to make him feel better. Whereas she (on average) would be likely to take every logical argument as in Luke’s story, as a personal affront, insult and rejection. There are plenty of exceptions, but if you take 1000 break-ups, I’d wager that in the majority of the cases a bit of reason on the woman’s side would make it less painful for the guy, while a bit of logic on the man’s side would probably make it more painful for the girl than “it’s not you it’s me”.
I have no idea how same-sex or other less-standard breakups work out in terms of rationality.
At least in my (admittedly limited) personal experience observing my family, friends and acquaintances. Certainly the cultural stereotypes bear it out, as well.
Your perception of the people you know plus cultural stereotypes is really pretty weak evidence. I could make the following argument: In my immediate family, the men are more emotional and less analytical/reserved than the women—they tend to get angry/aggressive in response to difficult things, whereas the women seem to stay calm. Plus, cultural stereotypes bear out the idea that men are more aggressive/angry than women. Therefore, men would be more likely to take this kind of letter badly.
I’m not making that argument, but I can’t see that it would be much weaker than yours.